[MUD-Dev] Re: FW: (Fwd) Bouncing mail

[J C Lawrence]

Date: Mon, 20 Apr 1998 17:59:16 -0500 (CDT)
From: Raph & Kristen Koster <koster at eden.com>
To: claw at under.engr.sgi.com
Subject: Re: FW: (Fwd) Bouncing mail
In-Reply-To: <c=US%a=_%p=EA%l=MOLACH-980420221729Z-59932 at molach.origin.ea.com>

On Mon, 20 Apr 1998, Koster, Raph wrote:
> [J C Lawrence:]

<<...personal details deleted here...>>

> I have begun to fear however that the list is also functioning to
> dissuade as much advancement in the field as it is fostering it, by
> burying its members in endless mental masturbation without ever having
> them actually go out and produce that next great server/game/idea etc.

Ah, the peril of the ivory tower. :) I doubt it is dissuading it, so much
as it is simply reflecting what woul dhave happened anyway. So you've got
a bunch of "great plan" people who at least are talking about their great
plan. I don't know that any higher proportion of them would actually be
putting it into practice if they DIDN'T have the list... do you? My
impression has always been that theoreticians, well, theorize, and those
who do, tend to just go do, rather than talk much about it. :) And then
there's the few (as we do have some on the list) who did first, and
conduct their endless post-mortems, like me. ;)

> We keep talking, and not one of us (notable minor exception of Chris
> Gray) has yet to actually *produce* anything that has been released
> since they joined the list.

I started to deny that I fit in that category, then I realized that I
joined the list after UO was pretty close to shipping. Possible after it
shipped. I don't remember when exactly I joined anymore. :P

It's certainly true that I haven't given anything to the MUD community per
se, however, in terms of code that can be built upon, etc. I confess to
being at the point with text muds where I'd want a fresh new code base,
from scratch, and I don't have time to develop one--nor, in fact, the
expertise to make it as I'd like.

Someday we'll release Legend's code, probably around the time when it is
completely obsolete. :)

> Very 1984/Kafka-esque -- keep your enemies *talking* about utopia and
> never actually *achieving* utopia and the thought police have lost all
> the battles and won the war.  Phyrrus would have love it.

So your goal was to prevent the evelopment of virtual reality in the 20th
century, eh? You fiend. ;)

I admit to having lost patience with much discourse surrounding what I do,
now, because I find myself with bigger fish to fry. I am more interested
in how exactly to get us to virtual worlds, than in whether or not
EverQuest or Asheron's Call will be a more fun GAME. (They probably will
be--I just don't think they will advance my underlying cause much). Much
of what is discussed ont he MUD-Dev list keeps that goal firmly in focus,
but of course, I long ago concluded it would never come to fruition in the
forms described by the folks on the list. ;) Too much talk, not enough
action, and, frankly, too wedded to text. (Agh, I can't believe I just
said that, I who championed literate mud area writing for so long...)

Oh well, I knew we'd drift back into mud-talk again. ;) So much for the
baby stuff! I look forward to hearing your comments on the mud-related
stuff in my earlier email, if you have any...

- -Raph

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                               Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------(*)                     Internet: claw at under.engr.sgi.com
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...

--
MUD-Dev: Advancing an unrealised future.